The Missing Heir

by Kylie Tennant

  There was the time when the Parent was obviously not fit to be left alone and I organised Louie to go down there and live in the Parent’s garage. Louie was working for some friends of mine on a property in the bush at the back of Berowra. He had long greasy ringlets and bad teeth, was untrustworthy, but swore he had given up drugs. He was gladly surrendered to me by my friends who assured me he was kind-hearted and really a lovable boy. I had my doubts about Louie but was in no position to query his provenance.

  Louie, they told, me, had been brought up in Homes. When he found out his real mother she wouldn’t let him in the house and told him to bugger off. Since then he had been trying to rehabilitate himself from a career that could only be hinted at.

  To my surprise Louie and the Parent got on splendidly. He was a new audience, not a bad cook, kept the house clean, went out with the fishermen on their boats and was immensely popular. In no time at all he knew everybody.

  The Parent was borrowing some cash money from me to buy a house for a lady friend of his who wanted to move out of two flats down the street. It transpired that the police had raided the flats for drugs. ‘But why don’t you use your own?’ I asked. ‘You’ve got far more money than I have.’

  ‘That is capital,’ the Parent said, pained. ‘I’d have to sell some of my investments.’ Much amused, I lent him the money. The flats were bought, the money duly repaid. Then the Parent had to go into hospital for a serious operation. I came speeding down from my farm on ‘Murder Mountain’. I was disgusted with the hospital but the Parent came through the operation like a tiger through a paper hoop and formed a great friendship with a bishop who was wandering the corridors of this Catholic hospital recovering. Pa snooped into all the wards and was the life and soul of the awful ward where they had put him above the kitchens.

  While he was away Louie rang me up from Patonga where he was living in the Parent’s garage. He pathetically said that he was ‘using it again’ and he thought he would move on. The Parent returned to find Louie had sold the Parent’s motorboat engine and had made arrangements to sell the TV. He hadn’t expected the Parent to recover. The Parent missed Louie. He would tell me sinister stories of his depredations. ‘He was the drug king of the east coast,’ the Parent said, offhand. ‘That garage of mine was a distribution centre. You remember the trouble when the police raided the flats? That was Louie. Boats would unload their cargo at the wharf.’

  After that nobody was anxious to find a replacement for Louie. It was naturally my fault that Louie had set up his operations in the Parent’s garage. So I gave up.

  There was the splendid day when a deputation of tennis players at Patonga came in to say that a certain unpopular set of residents had made off with the stone roller from the tennis courts. The Parent heard the plaint and magisterially strode off to retrieve the roller. A cheer arose from the group as he reappeared far down the road, sternly tugging the huge stone roller behind him.

  A famous local artist painted the Parent’s portrait — a hideous work in vivid reds which showed him as a cross between a leprechaun and a weathered rock. I think the Parent was proud of it.

  There was a period when the old age pensioners who formed the main part of the Patonga population were very snooty to the Parent. He couldn’t get the old age pension — he had too much money — and it was a grief to him. He had, he said, looked forward all his life to getting some of his tax money back. Then he got so old he qualified for a reduced pension and it was a pastime for him to live on it and save the rest. ‘What for?’ I yelled. ‘For God’s sake get this house repaired. I’m not trying to inherit your damned money. It would only muck up my taxation. I’ve got to keep you alive because I’d be in a hell of a fix financially if I inherited your money or any part of it.’ All my life I had earned my keep and was proud of it.

  From regarding the Parent with hostility as a non-pensioner the time came when they were proud of him. He was the second oldest inhabitant and then the oldest. He was out in front. They invited him on their buses and excursions and he went and enjoyed them.

  Stout John Martin, who had lived up the street for years, told me: ‘I took him out in the boat to his favourite fishing spot off the point and he cried. “I never thought,” he said, “that I’d ever come here again.”’

  He was life-president of the tennis club he had formed. He was prime mover in the politics of turning all the caravans out of the park. There were meetings — informal — on his front verandah about the way the sewerage truck charged, even if people had gone to Sydney and were not using their sewerage tank. Norah Martin — the Martins were one of the richest families — kept a severe eye on the sewerage man. Some people put a padlock on their sewerage tank so that the man could not claim he had pumped it out and charge them for it when they weren’t there. The library truck came every second week and there were the usual bazaars to raise money for the Pensioners Picnic Fund. The pensioners would go by bus to neighbouring villages to play bingo or the poker machines at the Returned Soldiers Hall. Edna-next-door was a confirmed bingo player. In front was the sea and a great stretch of stony tree-clad heights embraced the little inlet. The light house flickered its beam all night in front of the verandah.

  * * *

  When we were living in a small suburban house in Dulwich Hill handy to Roddy’s school in 1940 I wrote The Battlers. Roddy went to stay with his mother while I was away getting the material, and we then moved to this small house, built on what was once a tennis court and almost buried under nasturtiums, morning glory and trees.

  I wanted to go out on the roads by cart because the people on the roads who had ‘turnouts’ (sulkies, carts, vans) did not mix with lesser persons who used feet or bicycles to go from dole station to dole station.

  I was indebted to the Nicholson family of Roddy’s step-sister Bray for practical help in finding a half-draught horse and buying an old laundry cart. I had no experience of horses — a disadvantage which Roddy, as ignorant as myself of horses, waved away. Anyone he felt who could drive a car could drive a horse. The Nicholsons, on the other hand, who knew all about horses because they had a thriving dairy and milk run at Ryde, thought that to send out someone who had never driven a horse, harnessed a horse, groomed or fed a horse, was a dubious proposition. They were both right — Roddy in airily dismissing all difficulties, Bray’s charming family in recognising them.

  I soon learned to tend and harness the horse — a grey called Violet because she smelt — but not in banishing her suspicions of me. If released or hobbled she set off back for Sydney. If harnessed to go on the next stage of our journey she jibbed, attempted to dash the cart off bridges or into ditches.

  Poor Violet was quite right not to trust me. I was an inefficient horse-handler. By the time I got back to Sydney I was so familiar with horse harness that I stopped once in the street and went over to a man who had a horse and cart, saying: ‘Excuse me but your harness—.’ Even at a distance it had caught my eye. He was delighted that I had noticed his improvements in girth and buckles. We sat down in the gutter, me in my city-lady outfit, and argued out the merits of his improvements.

  Was not the old surcingle better? ‘No,’ said my acquaintance, ‘I’ll tell you for why …’

  On the Battlers trip I left Sydney as evening fell from the dairy farm at Ryde, driving Violet and accompanied by a woman friend — a convinced feminist — whose unfair and uncomplimentary picture I gave in The Battlers (she did not last very long). The first night out — we had set out at dusk to avoid traffic — Violet managed to smash the cart through a fence on a steep incline. Had I had better control of Violet this would not have happened, I am sure. So I pitched the tent and camped where the cart fell, setting off for a phone to ring the Nicholson family in the morning. Arthur came out, righted the van, mentioned that the wheel should be cut and shut, and set the expedition on its way again. I could write a whole book on the misadventures of that journey from Sydney through Bargo, Mittagong, to Queanbeyan, and then still he
ading south I camped all the way through to the cherry orchards of Young.

  There I parted with a pleasant couple of people, a man and a woman, who were trudging along the roads with an old cattle dog they had refused to leave behind in the city. The woman was hobbling along in the kind of shoes city women wear so I gave her my seat in the van and walked myself, with her husband and the dog. We struck dirty, rainy weather so we shared the tent at night. The dog slept under the van. He loved the van. This couple were looking for work as a married couple on a station and I hope they found it. They decided to go by train and try out in the far west so I parted with them and arrived in Young on my own.

  I was to meet up with two British migrants, Bob and Jim, who were supposed to look after me but they fled in a panic after one night when two drunken Aborigines came into my camp allegedly to murder me. I soothed them down but I lost Bob and Jim and teamed up with a mob of pea-pickers. The cherry-pickers were out on strike so I had to come out too, unfortunately, just as I got a job facing boxes of cherries. With these good companions, who showed me all the wiles of the road, I kept on south. Leaving my friends, I arrived by myself at Temora, Ardlethan and finally reached Leeton where, tired of the red dust storms, I took a job as waitress and skivvy at a boarding house. I was there when the canning factory burnt down. We were all waiting for work in the canning factory.

  It was in Leeton that I unfortunately managed to strangle poor Violet. I had been lent a stable and I had also been shown a new knot for tethering horses by an old drover. Tying this new knot I produced a slip knot and, leaving Violet tied up in the stable to await the return of the man in charge, I hurried back to serve dinner at the boarding house. In the morning one of the breakfasters looked at me sadly and said: ‘Your horse is dead.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I replied, laughing heartily. I thought he was ‘having me on’. But it turned out to be true. Violet had pulled back on my new knot and strangled herself. I mourned her terrible end, killed by my incompetence. I had meant to sell the horse and cart at Leeton. Now I sold the cart and went home to my husband, who had not realised that my researches would take so much time.

  He was still quite happy teaching at Dulwich Hill with this headmaster he admired. He was staying out so late every night with a lady university professor, who had been a friend of ours for years, that my little mother-in-law had significantly placed a photograph of me on Roddy’s dressing table. Roddy and I enjoyed this. My mother-in-law was by this time including me in her prayers and regarding me as truly part of the family. She enjoyed having me come home and tell her all the hair-raising things I had been doing. She was one of my loyal supporters; nothing I did surprised her but everything I did was correct and right even if I was drinking in some strange bar with criminals and listening to the slang they used. She liked to hear about it. There was nothing conventional about my ma-in-law; she had been at sea too many years. Remaining a perfect lady herself, she considered that writers had to pursue their avocation.

  I was always interrupted by the phone while I was trying to write The Battlers and made so many false starts I was in despair. Finally I decided to take the phone off the hook and typed all day on what became the first chapters. Towards evening there was a knocking and ringing on the door from a man who wanted to test the phone. ‘I took it off the hook because it kept ringing.’ ‘But lady, you can’t do that.’ ‘But I did.’ He rang up his boss. ‘George, will you speak to this lady — she took the phone off the hook.’ ‘It’s my phone and if I want to take it off the hook…’ ‘But you can’t do that. It runs the batteries down.’

  I completed The Battlers before Roddy was moved to Muswellbrook. His beloved headmaster at Dulwich Hill had retired. Muswellbrook was supposed to be promotion. Roddy became first assistant at a big high school, and hated it. He disapproved of big schools because he said he was not interested in turning out children like factory-made units. He was a teacher who loved teaching and instead of doing so much teaching he had to fill in statistics and forms. As usual he carried the workload of himself and a series of headmasters, one of them sick and one not so competent. His own health suffered and I was presently planning to get him out of there. Our friend Inspector Harrison described this remote seaside town. ‘Oysters, surf, swimming and wonderful country.’ So Doris Chadwick and I plotted to get him there. She was at head office and Clive Evatt, who was Minister of Education at the time, said, ‘Of course, if Kylie wants to write a book about Laurieton Roddy must have it.’ The Education Department hated this. Roddy’s qualifications were too high for him to be teaching in a small school. A pretty thing if teachers who should be at large schools opted to teach in small ones! So Roddy went to Laurieton and loved it. We were there eleven years.

  * * *

  I wrote about Laurieton in two books, Lost Haven (a novel) and again many years later in The Man on the Headland. This latter book was in amends to Ernie Metcalfe who was sensitive about the portrait of him in another novel I wrote, The Honey Flow.

  When we first moved to Laurieton from Muswellbrook I was completing Ride On Stranger, which was, many years later, very popular as a TV series. I attributed much of this popularity to the skill with which Peter Yeldham had adapted it. Before we left Sydney Roddy and I had been snooping around off-beat sects and societies. Then for Lost Haven I worked on the building of Eddie Dobson’s schnapper boat and Eddie, being a man of great propriety, decided he must bring his wife down to chaperone me. It was the best move he ever made. With my friend Dot Dobson on the slip no more tools were mislaid, work went more briskly, and Dot, now her eight children were off her hands, had been bored on Eddie’s farm behind the Big Brother mountain. Eddie and Dot loved Lost Haven. They read it aloud to the children at night by the fire. ‘When I came to me death,’ Eddie told me, ‘the tears were running down me cheeks.’

  The Parent had been hankering to set me to work. He had not retired at this time and always made some excuse to go up the North Coast so that he could call in at Laurieton. I went with him on one of his forays when we drove through floods and I collected a ham — an actual ham — which was shared out with great rejoicing on my return. At that time we had ration cards and in Laurieton we bartered food. Fishermen brought us fish, children brought mushrooms and the vegetables I grew were given away to deserving neighbours. We had hens and ducks — Roddy could not kill poultry so I had to do this. Ernie Metcalfe brought us honey and pumpkins. ‘You live high,’ the Parent said enviously, putting away my pipi soup. We walked over to the surf beach to collect pipis. Surf fishermen use them for bait but they make a luscious soup. There were always oysters which I collected from the breakwater.

  The Parent had a group of business friends who had come up with the idea of making a huge coffee-table book about Australia to sell to American servicemen who were in great numbers in Sydney during the war. The Parent had proposed me for the history of Australia which was to be part of it. When I was at school I had thought Australian history very dreary but now I found it enthralling. Roddy always hired the least hopeful of the girls who left school, allegedly to do the housework in my school residence. One of these reported: ‘Mrs Rodd never does anything but lie down all day reading.’ What she was reading was Robertson on land settlement in Australia. When I had despatched my completed history I was asked to improve the articles on cattle, sheep, politics and what-have-you. I would send a telegram from the little post office on the lake shore: ‘Send payment for sheep and I will begin on cattle.’ Back would come the reply: ‘Cheque in the mail. Proceed with cattle.’

  This enormous opus struck hard luck. One of the directors of the venture went off to America but died at Honolulu. Another had some trouble over what was considered mail fraud. Then the American publishers wiped the swollen great book. They only wanted my history. The contract specified that my history could not be published separately until after the projected big book came out. I so admired the syndicate’s contract, which had been drawn up by Gilbert Johnson, a solicitor of som
e renown, that I acquired Gilbert for my own solicitor. We got on very well together. I visited him once in his office and was amused by the imposing safe. ‘I’ll bet you there’s nothing in it,’ I said, ‘but bottles.’

  ‘Right,’ Gilbert said. ‘What’ll you have?’

  Goodie was getting a divorce and claimed that Gilbert — soured by his own divorce — always saw to it that a woman had the worst of it. However, he was a loyal friend to me.

  The Parent solved the dilemma of my history. He had himself appointed to the board of the company controlling it, rescinded the clause about my history and dissolved the company. The grandiose tome was never published but Australia Her Story sold in England and America for years — particularly in England where it was displayed in supermarkets. It was deliberately written for people who knew nothing of Australian history. Popularising was not then the great industry it is today. Real historians shudder if they have ever heard of Australia Her Story; but there is a good deal of snobbery among historians. I revised Australia Her Story later to bring it up as far as the fifties but refused to do more work on it after that. The book would have been too large for my simple public. While I was writing it I was writing plays for Roddy’s children (three little books of them were published by Macmillan and they are still being acted in schools); teaching them to handle a puppet theatre; teaching sewing; running the school residence; getting meals for visitors; raising vegetables; and seeing to the two horses. I taught in the school if any teacher fell ill. I was also the star of the first-aid class. This simple boast is justified as we were thirty-five miles from the nearest doctor and when anyone had an accident the trail of blood would lead to my back door. The standard of my first aid can be judged when I nearly cut my finger off with a reaping hook and just bound it up tightly myself, until it healed. Laurieton was a place where you could be bitten by a trapdoor spider or be smitten by mysterious diseases from mosquitoes or rotting fish on the wharves. ‘It’s going about, Mrs Rodd,’ the sufferer would say resignedly. As Rider Haggard said in one of his African books: ‘Fate walked about loose in Wambi’s country.’